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Dr. Harlow Shapley Dies at 86; Dean of American Astronomers

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Dr. Harlow Shapley, one of the world's best‐known astronomers, died in a nursing home yesterday in Boulder, Colo., after a long illness. He was 86 years old.

During the first half‐century of his life, Dr. Shapley's accomplishments as scientist, educator, administrator and author established him as the dean of American astronomers.

But when World War II and then Hiroshima gave proof that mankind had the means to destroy itself, the learned Harvard astronomer and professor began to shift his attention from distant galaxies to the plight of the inhabitants of his home planet.

Having willingly left the sanctuary of the academic and scientific worlds, he entered the lists of public affairs to do battle against ultranationalism, greed, hunger, pride and prejudice. He espoused unpopular causes that he believed to be right; he condemned the cold war that broke out in the late nineteen‐forties, and he urged in its stead a policy of coexistence.

In his 60's, Dr. Shapley (pronounced SHAP‐lee) found himself for the first time a public figure subject to criticism and abuse. Earlier, his accomplishments in astronomy, which scientists described as “of Copernican importance,” were often too obscure to be appreciated by the public; now his comments on the condition of mankind could easily be translated into newspaper headlines, and they were.

His support for the cause of friendship with the Soviet Union, which then was consolidating its hold on Eastern Europe, made Dr. Shapley an easy target for vitriolic antiCommunists. He crossed swords with the House Committee on Un‐American Activities and later with Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

Once denounced by The New York Daily News as a “leading U.S. Communist fellow traveler,” Dr. Shapley insisted that he was the fellow traveler only of minorities whose rights had been trampled upon and that he was “as far from a Communist as possible.”

In 1947, long before the phrase “Better dead than Red” became popular, Dr. Shapley made clear his views on totalitarianism. In a speech entitled “Peace or Pieces,” he said:

“A slave world is not worth preserving. Better be lifeless like the cold moon, or primitively vegetal like desolate Mars, than be a planet populated by social robots.”

Peace Secretary Urged

Peace, thought Dr. Shapley, should be the first concern of government, and two years after the end of World War II, he proposed the creation of Secretary of Peace and Welfare, a Secretary of Education and a Secretary of Science and Technology. Later, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare was established, but there was no Department of Peace, He really hadn't expected there would be.

“A Cabinet position, established with sincerity, devoted aggressively to digging out and activating the methods of attaining domestic and international harmony, is doubtless wishful dream,” he said. “But it is the realization, or partial realization, of such dreams that distinguished civilized man from the primitives.”

While Dr. Shapley's political beliefs were a subject of controversy, his position in the front tank of America's men of science was beyond question.

Dr. Shapley used a newly discovered yardstick of astronomical distances to displace our planet from its last claim to special status in the universe. The yardstick, based on, a relationship between the intrinsic brightness of certain variable stars and their pulse rates, enabled him to show that the earth and the sun are nowhere near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, as had been supposed.

Man's Stature Diminished

Not only were these findings of immense scientific value, but also they held import for religious thought and philosophy. By enlarging man's concept of the physical universe and placing him on a small planet orbiting a modest‐sized sun, which was one of millions in the Milky Way—that galaxy being one of billions in star‐populated space—Dr. Shapley diminished the stature of man in the cosmos.

“A little dose of the bigness of the cosmos is good medicine for religions that are too narrow, a good antidote for wobbly philosophies that make too much of man and his manners,” he said.

Dr. Shapley's argument that the solar system is in no way central to the Milky Way Galaxy and is, in fact, some 50,000 light‐years from its core was not generally accepted until he argued the case before his peers in a remarkable debate. (One light‐year is the distance traveled by light at 186,000 miles second in one year, or nearly trillion miles.)

On April 26, 1920, Dr. Shapley—then, in his own words, “a callow youth”—was pitted against the noted astronomer Heber D. Curtis of the Lick Observatory. The debate took place before a crowded audience at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

What Dr. Shapley had done, using Cepheids—variable stars —as yardsticks, was to plot the distances to globular clusters, or “star swarms,” all over the sky. Plotting their locations in three‐dimensional space, he found that they were scattered over a region so vast that it seemed incredible to his contemporaries.

Furthermore, 46 of these clusters lay above the plane of the Milky Way: 47 of them lay below it. Using their symmetrical distribution as a clue to galactic structure, Dr. Shapley calculated that the center of the galaxy lay 50,000 lightyears from the earth.

His findings also increased the apparent size of the galaxy tenfold. Dr. Shapley convinced many of his listeners in the debate with Dr. Curtis, although his distances ultimately had to be revised downward.

Not long after this debate, it was also shown that there are countless other galaxies like our own. As the dimensions of the observable cosmos increased, the scope of man's place in it became more humble, and it also became evi

dent that the heavenly bodies are in constant flux.

Although he scoffed at reports of flying saucers from space, Dr. Shapley never doubted the existence of life of some sort on other planets. He estimated that there was a minimum of “a hundred million planetary systems suitable for organic life.”

“There is no reason to believe,” he said, “that our mental stature hasn't been excelled by sentient beings elsewhere in the universe.” However, he wrote in “The View From a Distant Star: Man's Future in the Universe,” published in 1963:

“Exact duplication of Homo sapiens on another planet is very long shot, even in this chance‐rich universe of stars, space, time and enrgy.”

Born in Missouri

Harlow Shapley was born on Nov. 2, 1885, in Nashville, Mo. His father, Willis, who died during his son's boyhood, was schoolteacher and farmer; his mother, the former Sarah Stowell, was a descendant of Massachusetts settlers.

To earn money while attending Carthage Academy, Harlow worked at odd jobs. Upon graduation, he became a reporter for The Chanute (Kan.) Sun to help pay for his college education. By the time he entered the University of Missouri in 1906 as a 20‐year‐old freshman, he was city editor of the paper.

It was as a college freshman that he decided to make astronomy his life work. In his sophomore year he was appointed assistant to the director of the Laws Observatory, and in his junior year he found a practical use for his classical Latin. He wrote a paper entitled “Astronomy in Horace With 46 References to His Works.” It was published in Popular Astronomy.

He received his B.A. in 1910 and his M.A. the next year. Meanwhile, photographs he had taken of eclipsing variable stars attracted the attention of Dr. Henry Norris Russell, director of the Princeton Observatory. The young astronomer received a fellowship there in 1912 and his Ph.D. a year later.

From Princeton, Dr. Shapley went to the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, where, for the next seven years, as staff astronomer, he devoted himself to the study of Cepheid variables, stars whose light pulsations cannot be attributed to eclipses.

His research soon established the changes in temperature, spectra and surfaces of the Cepheids, and he concluded that the stars were actually pulsating. It was discovered that the heavier and brighter Cepheids had longer periods of pulsation, which meant that, by timing the rate of such a star, one could learn its intrinsic brightness. Its observed brightness could then be measured as an index of distance.

With the Cepheids serving as a new measuring tool, Dr. Shapley proceeded to measure distances and made his findings concerning the earth's position in the galaxy.

Originally, he estimated the diameter of the Milky Way at 300,000 light‐years, but later, with new observations, reduced that figure to 150,000. With his calculations, he placed the center of the system in a spot in Sagittarius now known to astronomers as Shapley Center.

In 1921, at the age of 36, Dr. Shapley, succeeded the late Dr. Edward Charles Pickering as director of the Harvard College Observatory and as Paine Professor of Prattical Astronomy.

The observatory, under Dr. Pickering, had achieved complete sky coverage with stations in both hemispheres and had undertaken the compilation of the world's most comprehensive collection of astronomical photographs.

While Dr. Shapley encouraged individual research in astronomy and astrophysics, he pursued his predecessor's policy of concentrating on largescale projects that required group effort. Among these were the classification of hundreds of thousands of stellar spectra that disclose the chemical composition of the stars and the cataloguing of an enormous census of external galaxies.

From his book‐littered circular desk, he directed the activities of as many as 25 big telescopes in Massachusetts, Colorado, New Mexico, Peru, South Africa and temporary stations. A fellow astronomer said that, as an administrator, Dr. Shapley “set a new high in the quantity and quality of the research work of his observatories.”

The introduction of improved telescopic and photographic equipment directed Dr. Shapley's attention outside the Milky Way to the spiral nebulae, which emerged as external galaxies much like our own, with hundreds or thousands of millions of suns. Moreover, these galaxies, photographed through “galactic windows,” or clear patches in the cosmic dust swirling about the Milky Way, were seen to be scattering at great speed—evidence of an expanding universe.

Dr. Shapley estimated the number of galaxies visible with the 200‐inch telescope to be one billion, the most distant being 200‐million light‐years away. Another billion, he said, lay hidden behind obscuring dust near the plane, of the Milky Way.

A leisurely pipe smoker, Dr. Shapley could race over a subject as fast as a tongue would permit. In retirement he switched from pipes to cigars. “Keeping the pipe lit was too much trouble,” he said. His interest and scholarship in biology and botany were often evident in his lectures,. for he used references to familiar plant and animal life to make understandable the unfamiliar world of the cosmographist.

His classes at Harvard—usually restricted to 20 to 30 graduate students and researchers—were conducted on an intimate level, and he often entertained the students at his home.

Always neatly dressed, al ways in a hurry, bounding up steps three at a time, Dr. Shapley was the antithesis of the easy‐going, absent‐minded professor.

In 1945 in London, as a member of the United States delegation, he helped found the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The same year he was Harvard's representative at the celebration of the 220th anniversary of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he was impressed with Soviet scientific and technological progress.

On his return to the United States, Dr. Shapley was outspoken about Soviet achievement. The Communist Government, he noted, was speeding development of the nation by giving priority to science. Contending that science was merely a peripheral concern in the United States, he urged that Government support of research be recognized as h necessity in a competitive world.

As the rift between East and West widened after World War II, he maintained a position of friendship for the Soviet Union while public opinion in the United States shifted from distrust of Russian words and deeds to dismay.

Subpoenaed by Committee

In November, 1946, Dr. Shapley was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un‐American Activities to answer questions about the Massachusetts Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, of which he was chairman.

After a heated wrangle with Dr. Shapley, Representative John E. Rankin, Democrat of Mississippi, who had been sitting behind closed doors as a one‐man subcommittee, emerged with the angry comment, “I have never seen a witness treat a committee with more contempt.” He threatened contempt of Congress charges.

“Gestapo methods,” retorted Dr. Shapley, who concededly was scornful of the committee's methods of investigating allegedly subversive groups. He advocated abolition of the House committee, which, he said, was making “civic cowards of many citizens” and was using the “bogey of political radicalism” to suppress liberal thought.

Mr. Rankin let the matter drop. A month after the incident, Dr. Shapley was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a move that was interpreted at the time as rebuke to the, committee and a token of the scientists faith in Dr. Shapley.

In March of 1947, he shared speaking honors with former Vice President Henry A. Wallace at a Madison Square Garden “crisis meeting” sponsored by the Progressive Citizens of America.

In January of 1949, he became acting chairman of Committee, of One Thousand “to protect the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment against the House Committee on Un‐American Activides.” The committee's founding group included: about 30 persons of national repute, among them Albert Einstein and Helen Keller.

In March of 1950, Senator McCarthy charged that Dr. Shapley had belonged to many Communist‐front organizations, and the Wisconsin Republican named the Harvard professor as, one of 81 “cases of doubtful loyalty of habits” who were or had been in the State Department. Actually, Dr. Shapley's only connection with the State Department had been as a member of the United States delegation to the 1945 UNESCO conference.

Cleared by Subcommittee

Dr. Shapley called the Senator's charges “untrue and Vague,” and later in 1950 Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee cleared him of the McCarthy accusations.

In September, 1952, having reached 66, the age at which Harvard administrators are automatically retired, Dr. Shapley gave up his position as director of the Harvard College Observatory. He continued teaching courses in cosmoggraphy, however, until he retired from the, faculty in 1956.

Over the years, Dr. Shapley wrote scores of research papers and newspaper and magazine articles. His books included “Star Clusters,” “Flights From Chaos,” “Galaxies” and “The. Inner Metagalaxy.” With Samuel Rapport and Helen Wright, he edited the wellknown anthology “A Treasury of Science.”

Dr. Shapley was an honorary national academician of 12 foreign countries and a trustee of many institutions in the United States and abroad. He had held the presidencies or chairmanships of a number of scientific organizations.

At the outset of his career in 1914 Dr. Shapley married Martha Betz of Kansas City, mathematician and student of astronomy. They had four sons and a daughter: Alan, ‘a geophysicist; Willis Harlow, a Government official; Lloyd, a mathematician; Carl, an educator, and Mildred (Mrs. Ralph’ Matthews), a mathematician, astronomer and author. A younger brother, John, is an educator.

In 1941, the Shapleys bought a country home in Peterborough, N. H., as a vacation retreat. In his retirement years, Dr. Shapley and his wife lived there alone with an old barn crammed with books and the overflow volumes filling the house.

Even in his mid‐80's, Dr. Shapley remained active in The scientific world, making occasional trips to New York or Philadelphia to screen research grants.

A version of this archives appears in print on October 21, 1972, on Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Dr. Harlow Shapley Dies at 86; Dean of American Astronomers. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe